Reliability of UDP on localhost

Question

I know that UDP is inherently unreliable, but when connecting to localhost I would expect the kernel handles the connection differently since everything can be handled internally. So in this special case, is UDP considered a reliable protocol, or will the kernel still potentially junk some packets if buffers are overrun?

Answer 1

I repeat a previous answer to a related question. To remain portable always anticipate your UDP sockets might drop packets or receive out of order data.

Answer 2

I don't think that UDP (or any other network protocol) says anything about different behavior when connecting to localhost. So the answer will depend on the specific kernel that you're using. Best to assume that UDP will behave like UDP.